Thorin's Lament
by Dr. Q. Uirk
Summary: A fix-it fic., in which Thorin is miraculously alive but all is not well. Gandalf's incursion into Dol Goldur causes a strange and utterly frightening backlash that entangles him with Thorin in a surprising way that will bring the two closer than they ever thought possible.


_AN: A terrible idea that grew into a beautifully terrible story by Lilyrosethedreamer and I. A story accompanying a comic by lilyrosethedreamer_

The streets ran with blood. The blood of men, elves, and dwarves. It ran in rivulets in the flagged cobblestones of Dale, it watered the dirt and stone of the foothills of Erebor until it was impregnated. And Thorin was on Ravenhill cutting the snake at its head.

Azog drifted below the ice, dead. It was then that Thorin knew that the last of his battles were won. Finality had a strange yet slaking taste. As he followed the floating body above the barrier of ice, the world seemed to come together at that moment; the beginning of his journey blended with the middle and slowly reached to meet the end, then the world shattered. Pieces of ice flew into the air and rained into Thorin's silently screaming mouth as he fell back against the ice and air was forced from his lungs from the impact.

A roar filled his ears, and he wasn't sure if it was from the blood or the orc flung up through the ice. He parried the flashing steel of Azog's prosthetic blade out of impulse, but the second of two furious blows just barely glanced off the edge of his own blade. If Thorin had been able to feel anything beyond the cold numbness filling up his right boot, he might have struck at Azog offensively, but the cruelty of his mistake was thrust into his suddenly clear mind in a blade striking at his heart. Literally. He held his sword horizontally over his body in desperation, and he looked into Azog's face, but he didn't know what he felt anymore. Although he was coherant combatively, the closure he had been so near to receiving had been sundered by a gleaming white blade pushing towards his chest. He knew that he must prevail, but-

Ah yes, there it was, the sad blossom of truth entered his heroic mind. Thorin had always been prepared to bear the weight of others at the sacrifice of himself. Sacrifice. Clean, cool, and cold as the feeling in his foot or the glancing length of Azog's blade. He saw the tactical end of his battle, his checkmate through letting Azog take the Queen, would allow his Pawns, his Bishops, his Knights, his Company to take the Kingdom. He did not object to it. He surrendered his blade to let Azog pierce his heart. As he did, as the metal began to scream, but before he could pull his blade completely away a mouldering cabbage, pummeled into the side of Azog's head.

If one is familiar with a plant, especially a cabbage, then they would know that they are saturated with water, which is the reason the people of Laketown protested when Thranduil brought a cart full of them from his storeroom of "Produce that Thranduil Does Not Like to Eat" to the lowly peasants as "rations" of "goodwill". Water, at cold temperatures, freezes, and the entire river winding around the base of Ravenhill was frozen.

When the cabbage struck Azog's head - not only did it scramble his mind into a world of permeating pain that shot all the way down to the base of his neck - it broke open into a thousand beautiful green shards of festering ball of rot. Thranduil hadn't the time to check his produce, you see. A stench that you couldn't imagine broke into what had been pristine air just moments before, and Azog wailed as he fell to the ground. He hit hard, and everyone standing on Ravenhill could hear the crunch of his bones.

"Death to you Thranduil, you great, stingy, white prick!" screamed the voice through the silence, the voice of a rebel, the voice of justice.

If there was anything just in the world it was the death of a man - who gave rotten cabbages to starving people displaced by a dragon. This man, this revolutionary had seen the flash of Azog against the sun when it hadnshone through the clouds just over the battlefield, and his tormented mind could remember only one thing that produced such a flash of light that seemed to be more of a trick of the eye than a real occurrence. In this man's heart of hearts he knew that the enemy had been on the top of that mountain, and he ran. Through the sheer force of his anger that boiled his blood he followed the dwarves up Ravenhill. He knew that that beacon of whiteness was Thranduil, and he was going to tell him what he could do with the cabbage he had been using as a shield.

But the orc on the ground had no more been Thranduil if Thorin had been.

"Death to you anyway!" he screamed then charged forth to the belabored and fainting body of Azog with several more frozen cabbages being shuffled out of his pack.

As the ice split open under the man flailing Azog's lifeless body with force of a cabbage and his sword pommel, a large rough palm grabbed Thorin.

Bilbo would have been horrified to learn that his hands had become so mangled by the dangers of the road and the sheaths of swords when he was a younger more foolish hobbit in the Shire, but death did not wait for fretting, and it did not wait to claim Azog as his own wieght buried him in the ice with the remains of the wormy cabbages and the shrieks of "I'm a hero!" from our, indeed, timely hero.

Thorin's eyes did not focus for a long time, but when they did, they met the familiar doughy, hobbity face above him, and he gasped out his name. There was not a smile on his lips yet, but that would soon follow once he _again_ found the strength to summon closure.

"You saved me," he said quite startledly to Bilbo.

"Death to you! I killed Azog!" whooped the man in the distance.

"What?" Thorin cried out.

Bilbo rested a hand on his chest and looked sternly into his eyes and set his jaw grimly.

"No. _No_ ," he insisted as Thorin slowly began to display the signs of getting up onto his bad foot, "rest," Bilbo clenched his fingers into Thorin's armor and found that they didn't have a grasp over the cold slicked metal, "We have to get you to Gandalf; he'll want to speak to you- Well I reckon everyone would!"

Through his babbling, he felt the tears begin to whell over the ridiculousness of the situation and felt the metaphor of his grasping fingers in hismsoul. He could not save Thorin's life, and he wouldn't have been able to if not for sheer chance of cabbage. The rock and ice seemed to crush into him at that moment about how uncaring nature was, how unfeeling was Middle Earth, and he was grateful that he could see his friend once more.

He looked at him and smiled, and Thorin finally smiled back. Relief took them. Bilbo leaned forward. They did not kiss. Bilbo was having some sort of heart palpitations from all the stress from the past weeks that was slowly unloading unto him like a ton of bricks.

His breath shuddered out of him as he finally stood and held out his hand for Thorin to take it. Everything was just too much. His friend's near death, his own helplessness, the cabbage king hollering behind them.

Thorin took his hand gladly, and they walked down the mountainside of Ravenhill, quite an odd creature with Thorin's limp and bulk rested on Bilbo, together.

But when Thorin saw Gandalf again, it had been only after he passed into sleep. He had remained on his feet through sheer determination to see his party alive and well again. He had mourned when he had not seen them all, but fatigue had eventually taken its toll.

"He's wakin'," said one voice that the resting dwarf could not place. There was a muffled sound of more voices and feet echoing off the surrounding stone of Erebor, but once he knew what his eyes were seeing, he was alone with Gandalf puffing on a pipe. Homely and warm as his beard, the wizard at ease inspired a lot of ease in people too, but Thorin did not feel at ease. His chest tightened as he looked at the wizard - who smiled at him through his beard.

"Didn't I tell you you would see your quest through, Thorin?" Gandalf remarked with a stuttered chuckle through his pipe and an undeniable twinkle in his eye, "What's wrong? I've seen happier expressions on the faces of men who have lived through battle."

But there was, the strong sense of something foul that couldn't be summed up in an odor, like the cabbage, or mere sight. Nothing, by appearances, was off. It was just a gripping feeling.

Gandalf's face creased as he looked closer at Thorin.

"Something's wrong," he said and pulled his chair to Thorin's bed and leaned over to study him.

"Don't," called out Thorin sharply when a Gandalf's beard jumped up as if possessed and snarled towards Thorin's face.

Gandalf cried out, and there was a loud bang of magic. Then calm. In the aftermath Thorin looked as startled as one might feel in these situations. Gandalf's beard lay over Thorin rather intimately and was quivering. It whimpered slightly. Thorin promptly drug himself out of bed and pointed at Gandalf with wide eyes and accusing fingers, or he would've if he could've. He met resistance against his face. Gandalf's beard squealed and wrapped tighter around Thorin's hair.

"Don't be alarmed," Gandalf said about the quite recently alarming events.

"Don't be alarmed? What should I be then? You come here with the aura of evil, and I am attacked in my own bed by- this?"

"I- don't think it's volatile. Not anymore. I think I might have calmed it."

"Gandalf, what is the meaning of this?" Thorin asked, while trying to separate the now sadly squeaking beard from his hair with brute strength. But the wizard was right. The feeling of evil had gone from the room.

"I don't know, but the aura you might have felt must have been residual. This is strange magic," Gandalf's voice was thoughtful even as he held his staff at the ready should something happen, " Dol Goldur," he finally said as realization washed over him, "Sauron cursed my beard."


End file.
